MI5 feared Communist Party plot against Royal Family, documents reveal

The files show that Britain’s domestic intelligence agency tracked the communists’ activities carefully during the build-up to the event, monitoring their plans and internal communications as the nation prepared for one of the most significant royal occasions of the interwar period.

Despite their concerns about potential disruption, the party’s approach was more nuanced than MI5 might have expected.

The communists organised a massive propaganda effort, producing one million leaflets attacking the monarchy for distribution throughout Coronation week.

Yet the party leadership simultaneously urged restraint, cautioning members not to provoke a public that was overwhelmingly supportive of the royals.

An MI5 report dated April 1937 recorded that a “comrade” in Manchester had been “severely censured” after suggesting a programme of demonstrations.

The party deemed such action reckless, arguing it would be “playing into the hands of the fascists and police”.

Rather than staging protests, numerous local branches were instead organising charabanc excursions to the countryside, though even these outings came with a political purpose.

“Members are being asked to utilise these occasions to propagate anti-monarchist propaganda,” the MI5 report noted.

However, the party acknowledged the difficulty of this task, warning activists they would be “going against the stream” and urging them to be “careful to speak in such a way that they do not make themselves unpopular with their neighbours.”

Alongside these efforts, communists were also encouraged to challenge what they regarded as “unnecessary expenditure on street demonstrations or spending by local authorities on banquets for councillors etc”.

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Not all party members heeded the leadership’s call for discretion, however. The files reveal that at least one activist in Poplar, East London, threw caution to the wind entirely.

The individual was overheard loudly denouncing “all this Coronation ballyhoo over the crowning of the biggest dumb-head that ever sat on a throne.”

The outburst offered a stark illustration of the tension between the Communist Party’s official strategy of measured opposition and the more forthright views held by some of its rank and file, a gap that MI5’s surveillance operation was evidently well placed to document.